Consumer electronic devices, such as smartphones and other portable electronic devices, have become increasingly popular over the past several years. In a competitive market, continuous improvements and enhancements must be made to electronic devices to satisfy the increasing consumer demands regarding the performance and/or functionality of such devices. However, despite consumer demands for increased performance and/or functionality, consumer expectations still require that portable electronic devices remain relatively small in size. As such, design considerations and manufacturing techniques for portable electronic devices must take into account the desire for increased performance and/or functionality while balancing consumer expectations in relation to the size of such devices.
One relevant consideration is the design and manufacture of flexible printed circuit (FPC) assemblies. Specifically, in many instances, it is desirable to hotbar solder all of the external wires to the flexible circuit body of a FPC assembly. However, conventional designs and manufacturing techniques for FPC assemblies often do not allow for hotbar soldering of all of the wires. For instance, hotbar soldering typically requires a minimum pitch between solder pads for the hotbar fixture. Unfortunately, for smaller flexible circuit bodies, it is often not possible to provide the minimum required pitch without staggering the solder pads in rows along a given side of the circuit body. In such instances, at least one set of wires of a given FPC assembly must be hand soldered to the flexible circuit body, which is an inefficient and/or time consuming process.